Wednesday, 25 July 2012

I know the UK's plummeting economic figures today are of much greater significance but I was more surprised this morning to read magazine allegations that Kristen Stewart had cheated on her Twilight co-star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.To make matters worse her fling was said to be with her Snow White and the Huntsman film director Rupert Sanders, twice Stewart's age, married, and with two children.I hope the story is a tissue of lies and the supposed incriminating photographs turn out to be fakes.Not that I give a fig about the young couple. I've never seen a Pattinson movie and certainly not any of the Twilight series; Stewart I remember from a couple of child actor roles.Where Pattinson and Stewart surfaced in my meagre knowledge of the world of celebrity was as a young couple, who had conducted their romance with discretion and pleasing modesty. Having finally admitted they were an item, they seemed very much in love. No dramas, no drunken scenes.In other words to dust down that over-exploited expression they were rare showbiz "role models."Well, that's taken a caning today. It just about leaves Michael and Catherine as epitomes of fidelity.

Grapefruitcrazy

I’m not going into that good night – gentle or any other way – for as long as possible. Hence the launch of this blog in December 2009 a month before my 65th birthday.
Why the blog's name? When my doctor temporarily prescribed statins to reduce my cholesterol levels she told me to exclude grapefruit from my diet. I received the profoundest sense of my own mortality.
I’ve never liked grapefruit but now banned they called to me siren-like from supermarket shelves.
Forbidden grapefruit, it can only be a short step until my body was denied solid food and then oxygen itself.
Originally a cultural blog subtitled last stop before the abyss, after building a large archive, I re-launched in a new guise in March 2012 and again in April 2014.
My interests are widespread; by nature I prefer to look forward rather than back. I’m male; divorced with grownup children; a retired national newspaper journalist; and a Londoner. GC